Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/751614
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2016 7 among a particular category of voters like white rural voters in a particular region will render poll- ing based on past electoral be- haviour problematic. Trump may well have managed to get the sup- port of voters located in strategic swing states who stayed at home in previous elections. Moreover compared to a relatively homog- enous society like Malta, the US is a highly diverse country were one finds pockets of different voters living a short distance from each other. The electoral map emerg- ing from the election was that of urban densely populated demo- cratic enclaves surrounded by a sea of red of more sparsely popu- lated areas. A surge in support in these areas may well explain the Trump phenomenon. 3. White rural voters were under represented Probably polls understate the fact that Trump picked up un- precedented turnout from rural voters, This is because these vot- ers may not even have voted in previous electoral appointments. Polls based on past votes might be ill-suited to understanding sud- den changes in the electorate or the way the electorate votes. Trump's focus on white ru- ral voters, who historically had shown a fairly low propensity to vote, may have motivated them to turn out in greater numbers. Such enthusiasm is hard for pollsters to detect. This may also have been a factor in Brexit where the referendum was lost in rural communities and run down industrial com- munities. Many have described these voters as "white working class", even if statistics which still showed Clinton prevail- ing among low income earners, indicate that electoral choic- es were more determined by the rural/ urban divide than by class. 4. Trump voters were shy The discrepancy be- tween internet polls and phone polls before the Brexit referendum in the UK has been attributed to shy leav- ers who were reluctant in telling pollsters their intentions over the phone. It is possible that "shy Trump voters" didn't want to admit their support to pollsters. However, there was no evidence of such a pattern during the Republican primaries, when pollsters experi- enced no such problem. Moreover given Trump's strong margin among rural voters, it is hard to imagine that people whose friends and neighbours mainly backed him would be ashamed to say so themselves. No discrepancy between inter- net and phone polling was ob- served in the US election. But it could well be the case that moder- ate Republican voters who disliked Trump but still preferred him to Clinton may have been reluctant to express this preference over the phone. But a likelier cause for underestimating Trump's popu- larity in key marginal states was a higher "non-response" rate among working-class whites who backed Trump. Was this category more reluctant or unable to answer the phone? Some suspect that these voters may have delib- erately refused to engage with poll- ing associated with what was perceived as a hostile liberal media. 5. Trump voters were more enthusiastic But the main reason for the dis- crepancy between polls in swing states and the actual result may well have been that these vot- ers simply turned out in larger numbers than Clinton voters who were less enthusiastic. One major let down for Clinton was that the much hoped for His- panic wall of voters which would have stopped Trump from win- ning states like Florida did not materialise as widely anticipated. With the margin being so close in most swing states, Trump may have simply won because Clin- ton underperformed among her likely voters in swing states, while Trump over performed among his support base in a number of key states. News with the US election polls? A Maltese parallel-the hunting referendum ONE major polling blunder in Malta was the spring hunting referendum in 2015. MaltaTo- day surveys were spot on predicting the out- comes of the 2008 and 2013 general elections, the MEP elections in 2009 and 2014 and the divorce referendum but failed to do the same with regards to the referendum on spring hunting. Other surveys conducted by Xarabank and Misco also foresaw a majority against spring hunting. The main reason for the discrepancy be- tween polls and the actual result – in which the pro-hunting camp won by a whisker - was the higher turnout in pro-hunting rural dis- tricts, and lower turnout in more urban anti- hunting districts. In this way the No majority in anti-hunting districts was lower than that predicted in polls and the Yes majority in pro-hunting dis- tricts higher than the No majority predicted in polls. As may have been the case with Brexit and the US election, the hunting lobby won the day because their supporters were keener to vote while their opponents were more complacent. Between 2013 and 2015, eight out of nine opinion surveys held by MaltaToday, but also one by Xarabank and one by Misco Interna- tional, had shown a majority of people against spring hunting. But the result showed the Yes to spring hunting winning by a small margin. Only one MaltaToday survey held in January had shown the Yes leading by 1 point but all other subsequent polls showed the No win- ning by a 5 to 7 point margin. The discrepancy could not even be attrib- uted to the margin of error, as the No major- ity in the last survey was just beyond the +/- 3-point margin of error. The discrepancy between the result and polls attributed to two factors: a much higher turnout in districts supporting the hunting community, and a shift of the undecided vot- ers towards the Yes camp in the final days. MaltaToday's last survey before the refer- endum had correctly shown the Yes leading in fifth, sixth and seventh districts (where there was a higher turnout in the actual ref- erendum) and no majority in the eight, ninth, tenth, tenth and twelfth district (where there was a lower turnout in the actual referendum). As may well have been the case with Trump victory's in the US it all boiled down to great- er voting enthusiasm among a category of vot- ers compared to dampened enthusiasm in the opposing campaign. An analysis of the result by district clusters showed the yes winning by over 60% in the La- bour-held, hunting country of the fifth, sixth and seventh districts – southeast and west, and in Gozo, as correctly predicted in Malta- Today surveys. On the other hand the No won by over 60% collectively in the cluster including the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth dis- tricts, which includes the urban areas north of the harbour and in the northeast. MaltaToday surveys also showed the No leading by 67% in the cluster, which included the eight, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth districts. But in an indication that a segment of north- ern voters stayed at home, in the actual refer- endum 62% of voters in these districts voted No. What MaltaToday surveys clearly got wrong was the vote of the inner and outer harbour districts represented by the first to fourth electoral districts. In these districts the MaltaToday survey showed the No and the Yes in a tie. In the ac- tual referendum 55% of voters in these four districts voted 'No'. This may be an indication that a number of undecided voters ended up voting according to party lines. FiveThirtyEight's forecast only gave Trump a 29% chance of winning FiveThirtyEight chief pollster Nate Silver